When most people think of a good Halloween horror movie, the first one that comes to mind is usually the original Halloween. It's one of the greatest horror movies of all time, and it's hands down the most famous movie ever made about the spookiest night of the year.
But I would suggest that there's another movie that's just as essential for your Halloween viewing: Trick 'r Treat. This film is popular in the hardcore horror fan community, but outside of that circle, it's virtually unknown. It's a 2007 movie that for some inexplicable reason never got a theatrical release, so it went straight to video with a million other forgettable movies. However, this one caught on with genre fans, and in horror circles, it's rightly considered essential viewing for our favorite holiday.
It's an anthology film, but it's different from most other movies in that style. It doesn't just tell discrete, unconnected stories. Rather, it moves back and forth from story to story, much like a regular movie with multiple subplots does, so it feels much more cohesive than your typical anthology film. On top of that, the stories are very interconnected as well. They all take place in a single town one year on Halloween night, and there are several narrative threads that run through more than one story in the movie.
So what makes Trick 'r Treat such a great Halloween film? Like I said, all the stories take place on Halloween, but there's a lot more to it than just that. This isn't one of those movies that just uses Halloween as a setting but then pretty much forgets about it later on. No, the holiday permeates every story in the film. They're all about different ways that people celebrate this night, and the victims in the various stories are pretty much all people who've broken some Halloween tradition. For example, there's a kid who smashes jack-o'-lanterns and a woman who takes down her decorations before the night is over, and both of them get punished very severely for their misdeeds. In this way, the movie celebrates the "rules" and traditions of the holiday, so if you're a big fan of Halloween (as almost all big horror fans are), you're sure to appreciate the hell out of Trick 'r Treat.
All that being said, great concepts alone don't make great movies, and the filmmakers behind this one didn't forget that. This movie is also executed really well. For one, even though the stories are all relatively short (as are all anthology stories), they're a lot more complicated than you normally expect from this style. Many of them take unexpected twists and turns, so you never really know what's coming next (and if you think you do, you're often wrong). On top of all that, the movie is just super fun. It has some cool and intriguing monsters, and that's really what Halloween is all about. It's about having fun with horror and just enjoying the genre, and this movie gives you a chance to do exactly that.
So this Halloween, don't limit your horror movie viewing to films that share the same name as the holiday. Michael Myers is great, but there's more to Halloween horror than just his movies. If you're a horror fan but you you've never seen Trick 'r Treat, then do yourself a favor and check it out. It's well deserving of its place in the Halloween horror fall of fame, so it more than merits a spot on your holiday watchlist.
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